Things You Learn
by featheredxrequiem
Summary: Memory burns are cold, she thinks as first one raindrop hits her skin, then another, until she blinks and it is storming. That is one of the things she learned when Kusanagi sent her to school. Drabble / One Shot, Implied MikotoxAnna if you look REALLY hard. Occurs post-anime and contains soul-shattering spoilers for the end of the series.


_So, I've been trying hard to work on Castle of Glass, I really have. I wanted it done by the end of the week, but my muse recently abandoned me and ran off somewhere; trying to catch her is like chasing swamp gas, so I've been on my own. Unfortunately, this has left me feeling less than pleasant because I haven't gotten any writing done and I feel useless. Long story short, I'm writing this K Project drabble because it's the only good idea I've had in the past two or three weeks and I really feel like I need to post something to validate my status as a writer. Don't ask me why. ;_; _

_In other news, you know the drill. I don't own the characters, I don't own the work(s) to which this one alludes, I don't own the series, etc. I just own the words I picked and the ways in which I chose to string them together in a manner we in the literary business like to call syntax. Enjoy?_

* * *

_Sometimes I come back to the coast where I watched him die._

A line of footprints pressed into the damp sand traces from the grassy knoll at the island's end to an overturned metal crate near the surf. Moonlight shines down on the sacred land, turning shadows blue and catching in the pale hair of a young woman padding down the coast. She looks like a ghost, but she's not the ghost here tonight. With her shoes in her hand, she stands for a moment with her bare feet in the foamy wash of the sea before sitting on the crate. The metal is cold under her hands, and she shivers, pulling the fur-lined jacket she wears tighter about her slender frame. She is small, but she has grown since the first time she sat here, and the black dress she now wears is better fit for the woman she has become rather than the girl she once was.

Almost ten years have passed since that day—exactly ten, she remembers as she looks up at the stars. A bolt of light tears open the sky, and she shuts her eyes, flinching away from the images of the past it brings up. It never got easier, but she still comes back every year. Maybe one year she might recover from this memory burn. Memory burns are cold, she thinks as first one raindrop hits her skin, then another, until she blinks and it is storming. That is one of the things she learned when Kusanagi sent her to school. It came from a book called _Autobiography of Red_. She liked that title. It reminded her of…

"Mikoto," she breathes, blinking again into the rain.

This time when she blinks, she does not open her eyes again. They stay closed and she stays still, shivering as the storm slowly seeps its way into her clothes and her skin. Water trickles down her skin like liquid rainbows in the moonlight, changing colors like opals when she breathes. Standing, she walks to the edge of the ocean; her feet can't tell the difference between the wet sand and the waves. She swallows back a scream—she's five years too old for that now—and opens her eyes, staring into the rain. Lights blink on the bridge, and another bolt of lightning cuts across the sky as she stretches out her arms towards them. This is how you say you miss someone without words. This is something else she learned in school.

_Sometimes I stretch out my arms to the lights in the sky. I can't see what color they are, but maybe they're green. I imagine that they are red. If red and green lie on opposite sides of the color wheel, and a desire for a green light will fail, maybe a red one will come true._

* * *

_I know, it's probably terrible, don't remind me. I probably wouldn't have posted this if I hadn't told A that I was going to, so here you go, A! I hope it's worth the read and worth the wait, like you said it would be. Books alluded to in order: _Autobiography of Red_ by Anne Carson and _The Great Gatsby_ by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Not mine, but fabulous books._


End file.
